Golf: Cormier a permanent fixture at Gardner Municipal

Saturday

May 31, 2014 at 11:38 PMJun 1, 2014 at 12:11 AM

By Bill Doyle

No one has played Gardner Municipal Golf Course for as long as Clarence "Clancy" Cormier.

Cormier, 89, is the only golfer who was a member when the first nine holes opened in 1936 and still is today. The only years he didn't belong to the course were the three he served in the army during World War II. Cormier actually worked at Gardner Municipal before it even opened.

When the course was being built on a former cow farm in the mid-1930s, Cormier delivered buckets of water to the Works Progress Administration workers.

"They'd take a scoop," he said, "and then take the bucket and pour it all over themselves because they were so hot."

The course has been an important part of his life since.

"I'm a fixture here," he said while sitting in the pro shop recently. "I can tell you every nook and cranny in the place. You can tell me what green you're on and where your ball was, and I could tell you how it's going to break."

"Everybody knows Clarence," Gardner manager Dan Berry said. "The joke is that if Clarence yells to pull the pin on the fifth green, 18 pins come out of the greens because he's got a rather boisterous voice. Everybody knows when Clarence is around."

He's been around for a long time. Cormier will turn 90 on July 19. When a visitor refused to believe he was that old, he pulled his driver's license out of his wallet to prove it.

Cormier used to play to a 2-handicap, and he won the club championship once, 50 years ago. He has also had five aces.

Cormier credits the worst experience of his life with helping him live for so long. A former Army sergeant, Cormier was a prisoner of war in Germany for six months during World War II.

"It taught me how to be resilient," he said, "because you had to be resilient to live."

Cormier and his fellow prisoners were forced on a death march.

"We had no food, and we were marching all the time," he said. "We slept in the gutters, drank water from the gutters. Guys would (urinate) over there, and you're drinking over here."

Cormier said he ate anything he could grab, including cow manure, but he survived.

"That gave me the fight," he said. "I've got a lot of aches and pains, but I don't sit and moan about it."

The 5-foot-11, 240-pound Cormier has two artificial knees and a pacemaker, and he takes a blood-thinner, but he still heads to the golf course most days to play. He can't stand sitting at home.

"If you're going to do that, you're going to deteriorate," he said. "I'm not saying I'm not going to deteriorate. I don't know. But I'm going to fight as long as I can."

Cormier said he was the first person to use a cart at the course. Now he is one of a handful of older golfers with their own private carts. His cart has two American flags, headlights, directional lights and a horn. The back of the golf bag that Ping gave him because he was a prisoner of war reads: Ex-POW, Clancy. He also wears a Ping cap.

Cormier usually plays nine holes, but plays 18 in tournaments. He shot a 40 for nine the other day. He carded an 81 last year, seven shots lower than his age.

Two years ago, he began playing from the forward tees, which play 4,898 yards.

"They wouldn't let me play them (in tournaments) before because I was shooting my age too much," he said.

He still plays the regular men's tees on the par 3s. He hits the ball straight, and he putts well.

The lifelong Gardner resident who worked as an engineer has six children, 11 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. His wife of 66 years, Theresa, died at age 88 two years ago this month. He choked up when he mentioned her name. He misses his wife and the times they spent playing golf together.

"To me," he said, "golf was the thing that kept me stable. That was my peace with myself and my wife."

If he wasn't playing golf at Gardner when he was younger, he'd play in Florida or Myrtle Beach. He used to work as a ranger at Gardner and in Myrtle Beach at Wild Wing Plantation.

Cormier has old hickory shaft irons and a hickory shaft putter at home that are older than he is. Someone offered him $400 for them a few years ago, but he turned him down. He figures if Jack Nicklaus played with today's equipment in his prime, he would have been unbeatable.

"Those guys could work the ball any way you wanted," he said, "with what they had. The golfers today can't do that."

Aikens and Riley shot 65-66 for a two-day total of 13-under 131 last year to win by two shots. First-round leaders Jeff Santora of Cyprian Keyes GC and Taylor Fontaine of Cohasse CC tied for second with Matt Bianchini and Jeff Zidonis, who both played out of what was then called Mount Pleasant CC but has since changed its name to The Haven CC.

Past champions Frank Vana of Marlboro CC and R.J. Foley of Sterling National will tee it up next weekend. They placed fourth last year.

The championship flight will tee off in a shotgun start at 7:30 a.m. Saturday and 1:30 p.m., a half-hour later than usual, next Sunday. The shotgun starts for the A and B flights will take place at 1 p.m. Saturday and 7:30 a.m. next Sunday. A total of 110 teams are scheduled to compete.

Quinn, Stiments go for Open

Fran Quinn of Holden and Ricky Stimets of Paxton will play in the second stage of U.S. Open qualifying on Monday at Old Oaks CC & Century CC in Purchase, New York.

The U.S. Open will be June 12-15 at Pinehurst, North Carolina

Quinn shot a 1-under 70 at Twin Hills CC in Longmeadow on May 6 to grab one of four spots in the local qualifier. In March, Quinn shot 70-75 to miss the cut in the Web.com Tour's Panama Claro Championship in Panama.

Stimets, who played golf at the University of North Alabama, shot a 68 in the U.S. Open local qualifier at Timberline CC in Calera, Ala., on May 5.

More local Champions

Another Champions Tour major is heading to Massachusetts.

The USGA has announced that the U.S. Senior Open will return to Salem County Club in Peabody on June 29-July 2, 2017.

Three weeks earlier, the Champions Tour announced that another of its five major championships, the Constellation Senior Players Championship, will be held at Belmont CC on June 11-14, 2015.

Salem CC hosted the 2001 U.S. Senior Open when Bruce Fleisher defeated Gil Morgan and Isao Aoki by one stroke. Nicklaus finished two shots back.

Fleisher won 18 Champions Tour events, but he captured his only PGA Tour title in the 1991 New England Open at Pleasant Valley CC, beating current CBS golf broadcaster Ian Baker-Finch in a seven-hole playoff.

The Champions Tour, then known as the Senior Tour, held an event at Marlboro CC from 1981-83 before moving to Nashawtuc CC in Concord through 2008.

Salem CC, a Donald Ross design which opened in 1925, has hosted five other USGA championships.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias claimed her third U.S. Women's Open in 1954 by 12 shots, just months removed from surgery for colon cancer. She died of the disease two years later. Zaharias remains the championship's oldest winner at age 43. In 1984, Hollis Stacy also won her third U.S. Women's Open at Salem.

Salem also hosted the 1932 U.S. Women's Amateur and 1977 U.S. Senior Amateur championships.

The U.S. Senior Open will be the 57th USGA championship held in Massachusetts. In 2016, Wellesley Country Club will host the U.S. Senior Women's Amateur Championship.

Worcester native Tim Flaherty has been the senior director for the U.S. Senior Open for 18 years. The event is open to professional and amateur golfers who are 50 years of age with a handicap index not exceeding 3.4.

By the way, PGA Tour star Steve Stricker turns 50 in February 2017.

Contact Bill Doyle at wdoyle@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillDoyle15.